One way to gauge the gulf between England and India so far in this series has been the contrasting demeanours of the men behind the stumps. Ian Smith, the former New Zealand wicketkeeper, titled his autobiography Just a Drummer in the Band, and by his analogy Matthew Prior's keeping, agile, focused and supremely relaxed, sounds like Ringo Starr jauntily riding the hi-hat and nailing the fills while Mahendra Singh Dhoni, jaded, diffident and his timing gone to cock, reverberates like a one-man band tumbling down a marble staircase.

Both are examples of the new breed of batsmen-wicketkeepers, the trail blazed in unmatchable poise and elegance by Adam Gilchrist, who built on the foundations laid by Jeffrey Dujon and Alec Stewart with such brio to become the automatic pick for the overwhelming majority of pundits' rain-delay, all-time World XIs. The modern tribe are a polished bunch, immaculately groomed and kitted out, barely breaking out into a gentle glow, never mind anything so vulgar as sweating.

Most wicketkeepers I played with used to stink, more literally than metaphorically. Pernickety about their kit and superstitious about washing it, when they opened their bags the dressing-room air was alive with the aroma of damp, Ralgex and week-old egg sandwiches. One soaked the back of his knees in Dettol before matches to counter the chafing effects of squatting in batting pads but it did little to disperse the fug that surrounded him. If he stood up to a spinner, a rare scenario since he had an odd fancy for stopping the ball with his legs to spare his pummelled hands, the biggest threat he posed to the batsman was forcing him to bat one-handed with a handkerchief clamped over his mouth with the other.

Gilchrist and his heirs would not require the batsman to take a nosegay to the crease and they tend to set the fielding side's tempo by deed more than word, more orchestra conductors than circus ringmasters. Paul Nixon, the Leicestershire stalwart who on Monday announced his forthcoming retirement, was perhaps the last of the old school effervescent eccentrics, and some of his feistiness might galvanise a team so demonstrably in the doldrums as India.

When Nixon took his place in England's demoralised squad for the one-day series after the Ashes drubbing in 2006-07, his ebullience and ability to irritate the opposition inspired the most unexpected transformation of spirit. At the Gabba he told Andrew Symonds, whose hitting had bullied England's callow bowlers: "If you edge and I take the catch, I'm going to send a copy of the scorecard to your home every day for a year." He promptly caught him. At the SCG the keeper tried to run Symonds out while the batsman was gardening, needling him so much that he tried to smack a delivery from Sajid Mahmood so hard that his biceps was torn off the bone.

Ian Healy was a peerless wind-up merchant, once telling silly point to get "right under Nasser's nose" then stationing him six feet from Hussain's bat. But prickly provocation would count for nothing if Nixon and Healy were not so technically proficient. Healy would chatter away throughout an over, making his strangulated yelp of "Bowling, Shane" a catchphrase recognisable throughout the world.

Pakistan's Moin Khan sprinkled his boy-soprano encouragement to Mushtaq Ahmed and Saqlain Mushtaq with cries of "Shabash, shabash", Urdu for "Bravo, bravo". Before their emergence keepers tended to clap their gloves together and occasionally shout "Good bowling". Now they blather incessantly.

Nixon had a mid-career stint at Kent, the home of England's bountiful wicketkeeper production line. Les Ames and Hopper Levett, his deputy, played before the second world war, Godfrey Evans, the athletic Mr Pickwick presence behind the timbers, in the great teams of the 1950s. APE Knott, the nimble, soft-handed, jack in the box mastered the trade so extraordinarily that you could pass off calling any wicketkeeper "ape" as flattery.

None was so committed to the England cause nor as kooky as Knott's pupil, Jack Russell. With his much-repaired sun hat and wrap-around sunglasses he resembled a cross between the Terminator and a scarecrow. His dietary quirks are well know, the epic tea consumption and his use of a stopwatch to time the soaking of his Weetabix, but he was also superstitious and insisted on clattering Mike Atherton's pads with his bat at the end of every over during their epic match-saving stand at the Wanderers in 1995.

For all his foibles, Russell was a superb wicketkeeper and a doughty batsman. Teams now require gamechangers in the role, counterattackers with the bat who can also pile on the misery at an astonishing rate when their teams are well set.

In that role Prior has flourished and his keeping has improved to such an extent that the order in which the terms batsman and wicketkeeper are joined has become irrelevant. Dhoni has to restore that verve to his game, and do it quickly.